


The Mark

by Lyssandra_Med



Series: Hiatus [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Modern, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Alternate Universe - Weird Fiction, Blackcest (Harry Potter), F/F, Hat Trick, Hermione Granger Scores a Hat Trick, Horror, Multi, Slightly Inspired by House of Leaves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:24:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21750706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyssandra_Med/pseuds/Lyssandra_Med
Summary: Hermione Granger has a problem.Not the women she dates, not the run-down hovel she lives in, or the mounting debt attributed to an extra year in college.She has a problem, and it's growing.Beige turned to grey, grey turned to black-The Mark is growing.
Relationships: Bellatrix Black Lestrange & Narcissa Black Malfoy & Andromeda Black Tonks, Hermione Granger & Andromeda Black Tonks, Hermione Granger & Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Hermione Granger & Narcissa Black Malfoy, Hermione Granger/Andromeda Black Tonks, Hermione Granger/Andromeda Black Tonks/Bellatrix Black Lestrange/Narcissa Black Malfoy, Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Hermione Granger/Narcissa Black Malfoy
Series: Hiatus [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1521653
Comments: 8
Kudos: 44





	The Mark

**Author's Note:**

> Oh hey it's me, with another poorly edited first chapter to a long fic 
> 
> (updates whenever I get around to them).
> 
> This is gonna be weird.

Silence, oppressive and all-encompassing. 

Or it would have been, if not for the staccato _click-click-whir_ of a camera stuck facing the - _nearly_ \- solid wall. The shutter was - _decrepit_ \- broken, calling out with a broken rhythm-

_Open-_

**_-closed_ **

_Open-_

**_-closed_ **

Brown eyes, more hazel than green, startled along with heaving breath and blown out pupils. Too dark. Too still.

_Move._

Off to her side she could hear painfully laboured breath, near panting - _near choking_ \- as a snore forced its way up a constricted ribcage. Unconsciousness then, rather than restful sleep. 

The camera-

_Open-_

**_-closed_ **

_Open-_

**_-closed_ **

  
  


Both sounds were easy indicators that it wasn’t time for her to be awake, time for her to face the world. Time for her to deal with-

Well.

Anything.

_But hadn’t it been that way, for months now it seemed, for each of them?_

Something else - _somewhere_ \- was colliding with soft thuds against the cladding outside their rented little hovel; either something made of metal, or plastic, or perhaps it was something else entirely. Something, at any rate, that could wait until morning. It wasn’t loud enough to wake her bed partner, it wasn’t loud enough to deal with. It just _was._ Annoying, persistent enough to wrap around her mind, but not enough to pull her away from the confines of the bed. Enough to pull her from what had been - _for once, since this nightmare had begun_ \- a dreamless sleep?

Yes.

Enough to force action where no effort or desire existed?

No.

A full bladder and heartburn? 

More than enough to get her moving.

A glance to the side revealed that Narcissa was still nowhere around. Not here, not in this room, at any rate. There wasn’t even a sign she had visited since everyone else passed out who knew how long ago. The side of the bed that she had claimed was just as empty - _hollow_ \- and pale beneath the moonlight as she had left it the night before.

 _And_ the night before then, as well.

The remaining portion of the mattress was occupied by a warm body, the snoring lump of hot flesh condensed into the walking migraine that was Bellatrix. Or was it Andy? Honestly, she wasn’t sure. Not at who knew what fucking time it was in the morning. The two women looked so similar in poor lighting - _pale, dark, just crazy enough in all the right places_ \- that she had given up on using proper names after the fifth time she found herself beneath the warm tongue of the opposite to who she thought it had been. The woman - _whichever she was_ \- shook on each exhale, the source of the fretful snoring that had woken her up. Dead to the world, most likely. Comatose until her liver managed to suss out the litre of whiskey that Hermione _mostly_ remembered being the first one to drink out of a few hours prior.

The darkness of the silent room was hiding the sleeping form from a full inspection, only a slip of pale skin and dark curls poking out from below the comforter. The lump shook though, rising and falling enough with each rattling exhale that she couldn’t find it within herself to wake them, or phone in an emergency.

_Yet._

Maybe later, if she didn’t wake - _or the snoring stopped_ -, but not now.

Was the woman comatose? Perhaps. It wouldn’t be the first time one of the sisters had ended up with a tube down their throat and an intravenous drip poking through a vein. But that was for later. Watching the barest bit of her from here would have to suffice for now. 

Did she honestly care if she missed an episode? No, not really. Later, maybe, if she ever truly woke up from whatever hell it was that they had all entered. She would save it for later, when Narcissa was back, and whenever the bloody racket of the shutter and whatever the fuck was outside calmed down.

A slipup with her balance - _temporary, she reminded herself_ \- nearly led to her feet falling out from beneath her as she skipped and hopped across the ruined tatters of their bedroom carpet. An angle this way, a tilt towards there, her back heel just barely dragging along the bare concrete poking through a portion-

The summer she spent learning shitty dances in useless ballet managed to save her. She didn’t trip, didn’t fall, avoided stumbling across her hands and knees down onto last night’s clothes and a bottle of what she was sure was more than just vitamins. Her ankle still rolled - _another in the litany of pains_ \- as she cantered off towards the bathroom, hissed breath competing with the snoring as she caught herself. Thin slivers of light from beneath the black-out blinds illuminated her face for just a second, just a moment, pain and wear all obvious across her features.

Oh well.

Another item for the pile.

No one would ever say that she had purchased an exorbitant flat. If the general disuse and disrepair weren’t enough to state that, then the short distance from bed to shitter certainly pointed that little bit out.

Was it cheap? Yes, oh Gods, _yes!_ The cheapest fucking pick up in the whole city, _thank-fucking-Lucifer._

Was it a shit-heap? Well, also yes. Unfortunately.

Mostly that was due to the fact that beggars weren’t choosers, or whatever the platitude was that Harry always crowed on about.

With a tired sigh, she bit back choice words when her fingers smashed into the hole where a doorknob had once been. Pulpy composite, weird angles, splinters waiting to be born. The knob had gone missing more than a few nights prior after they had all spent hours undressing one another, hours spent disappearing into a bottle of vodka and Narcissa’s favoured bag of pick-me-ups. Now there was only space for two fingers to push or pull it open.

_Click_

_Open-_

**_-closed_ **

_Click_

_Open-_

**_-closed_ **

_Whir_

She failed to bite back the curse when the noise sounded off again. Intuitively Hermione knew that eventually, she would need to bugger Andy - _Bellatrix_ \- into buying something else. She would have to jump on her - _them_ \- for buying such an incredibly abysmal purchase. Lousy tech, tech that she _knew_ had been bad, even before it had been brought home. And now she would be the one to explain just _why_ it was better to purchase quality over price.

If only for the sake of starting an argument that would end in her shoving the damned thing down one of their throats in retribution. 

Bellatrix - _Andy_ \- needed to buy _good,_ buy _proper,_ or just fuck off already so the rest of them could work. All of their lousy attempts at helping were more liable to turn into a time sink than they were worth, more of a waste than they had been provisioned. 

If things kept going like this, one of them would fail. Or fall.

 _All_ of them should fail if it came right down to it, Hermione knew that, knew it and understood it as being the singular logical outcome to their fucked up little investigation. Hermione _knew_ that she gave just as good as she got, and if anyone was to walk away from this alive it should be _her._ She also knew that Andy - _Bellatrix_ \- would find a way to weasel herself out of the fryer, leaving the rest of them to burn.

The rest of them left to rot.

And even if that didn’t happen, even if by some miracle they managed to survive, _Hermione_ would be the one left with Narcissa breathing down her neck.

… Not that she particularly minded that. She wouldn’t outright _object_ to being placed in that position. Narcissa did happen to have a beautiful rack after all, even if she wasn’t exactly as comparable to Bellatrix or Andy when it came to bedroom insanity. And being the target of the woman’s ire would certainly be a step up from the absolute lack of presence that she had been the past few weeks. On the other hand, any situation that led to that would start with Narcissa’s silver eyes burrowing down into Hermione’s skin, and her ire on display for all to witness.

Disappointment in her gaze, clear as day.

Besides-

_They could not fail._

They had no room for failure in this little joint-venture. They had no backup plan. No saving grace. There was nowhere to go but up, and none of them were in any position to do anything at all but soldier on regardless of setbacks or delays.

No matter the pain, there would be no failure.

Later, of course.

 _After_ she finally managed to get out of this godsforsaken shitty bathroom and off the too cold tiles that seemed like frost that bit and ate at her toes. _After_ she left this hellhole with its sink that never once seemed to work right or hold itself at a good temperature. _After_ she disappeared from the darkness brought on by lights that always hummed far too loudly for her tastes - _if she managed to get them turned on_ -, and flickered non-stop.

Later.

 _After_ she managed to get her hands on Narcissa and drag Bellatrix - _Andy, whichever fucking one was available at that point_ \- along to give the blonde hell for, once a- _fucking_ -gain, ignoring them.

Later.

 _After_ she took that goddamned camera and fixed - _destroyed_ \- it, and it’s broken shutter.

She breathed deeply, _calmly,_ as she stood before the bed. The scene presented to her was the same as it had been when she left. No sign of Narcissa, a sleeping woman, debris and clutter strewn across every surface.

Just her, just _one_ of the Black trio; Hermione Granger and the Devils, all of them set against the world.

She passed back into a dreamless sleep the moment her head hit the pillow.

\---

**_Before The Madness_ **

The splitting gash that opened up inside the north wall of Hermione’s rather cramped little foyer was a peculiarity unlike any other. That much was for certain. In one breath there had been nothing but the wall-

Beige.

Boring.

Rather much like every other government-built house from back in the early Sixties. It was a design favoured all over town, something that could be built up from nothing with as little effort as possible. Preferably while also being built in as short a time as possible.

Then the next moment it was blemished.

Tarnished.

Marked, and _different._

_Something was wrong with her fucking wall._

The white of the paint had rolled into an off-brown, something stained to mirror a combination of too ripe eggshells. It had left her standing there with head cocked off to the side and a hand buried amid the streaming curls that feel down off her shoulders. Her first instinct had been to call out Bellatrix for smoking indoors again. The action would have directly gone against the rules she had helpfully taped to the refrigerator door, an action that she could punish.

In imaginative ways, of course.

Cigarettes, weed, even the ridiculous clover bullshit that the woman had been so fond of recently-

Hermione had outlawed all of it from _inside_ the house. Outside was fine, but inside? Inside was off-limits.

But, she had assumed, needs must. And if anything in the world was true at all, Bellatrix had _needs._

Usually, those needs revolved around having _something_ stuck between her lips - _Hermione’s fingers and tongue, most recently_ -, not that she could complain.

But now the blemish - _stain_ \- was staring right back at her with all the force of her disappointed father. Off-colour, just barely noticeable, but enough of an eyesore that she was left rocking from side to side with a palm against her cheek, a hand supporting her elbow, and hip cocked out to the side. Her eyes were narrowed lines of hazel, curious and filled with what she believed - _then, and only until recently_ \- to be righteous anger. The blotch was wrong in all the ways that colour shouldn’t be, wrong in all the ways that logic couldn’t support. 

She initially intended to wipe it clean, bring it up as a talking point-

But she couldn’t.

Not when it was still there after hours of scrubbing. Not when it was still there the next day, and the day after next, on and on until a week had passed by with no change besides it _darkening._

Not when Bellatrix was nowhere to be found, hadn’t been around for just about the same length of time.

Andy had been by, had slept between her sheets and arms for more nights in a row than she had ever done before. But Andy didn’t smoke. _Couldn’t,_ even. Not after a childhood accident involving something that her Trio’d paramours refused to explain.

The whole thing was a mystery, through and through. A head-scratcher that managed to coincide with the timing of her last Finals, all of it well-timed to her need for a wide assortment of pictures. Padding out a portfolio was hard work after all, and if random inane drivel kept her professors drooling in her attention to detail-

Well, all the better then. 

All of it well-timed to moments of desperation that left Hermione pacing around the house all day long in search of _something_ that would be worth putting her name to. Well-timed for her to turn a mild _interest_ into _curiosity,_ and from there to bloom it into an _obsession._

She needed at least three hundred pictures, all of them of anything at all, three hundred photographs to convince her advisor and Professor… Professor _Something._ She knew she ought to know the proper name of the woman overseeing her future livelihood, knew it would go better for her in the long run, but seeing as the old bitch had managed to hold a sword over her neck for five years, what did she _really_ owe the Has-Been-Photographer? Was a teacher at some shitty second rate college in the ass-end of North Dakota _really_ worth a spot in her permanent memory? She was worthy enough to pass without remembering any of them fondly in a year or two, even if her motto had dropped from _Straight A’s_ to _C’s Get Degrees._

She was warranted at least that, right?

Five years, over a hundred thousand dollars of debt, fifteen cameras loaned out, and a portfolio that weighed almost just as much as she did.

It was worth it, this new obsession had to be. It _needed_ to be worth it if for no other reason than what had initially begun as a boring idea to soak up her time and energy had become something _more._

The Spot continued to darken as the days progressed, one by one until soon enough the terabyte drive she had been using to manage this little curiosity had become full and bloated with repeated images. Automatic timer left on day and night. She switched it out for another, empty and ready, but even then it wasn’t enough. Eventually, she switched from still lens to videography, something not within the limits of her Final but necessary all the same.

By then she was well and truly past the point of caring about school, or her portfolio.

There were no pipes embedded within the wall. She knew that after checking up with the city records, spending great lengths of time in a shitty, poorly lit room as she rifled through drawings and blueprints. The argument that it was simply water falling in off the roof was convincing, for a time.

It didn’t feel _right._

The Mark.

Growing darker, growing larger, until eventually - _like all things in her life_ \- it went to pot. The Finale was a surprise. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. Nor was it the most unexpected thing to happen in the days that passed afterwards.

It was the _beginning._

Or the end.

Hermione wasn’t a Philosopher. Never would be, either. She had argued with Neville about whether his Degree was real or not for who knew how long, certain that she was right. 

What would he call this unfortunate turn of events?

_The Mark opened._


End file.
